Facebook has psychological consequences for teens, study finds

A new study shows Facebook as well as other social networks could have lasting psychological effects on teens.

Since the rise of social media, parents have been concerned with what exactly their kids are doing online. But now, Mashable reports, a study out of California State University Dominguez Hills, suggests it is not what the kids are doing on Facebook, but what Facebook is doing to them psychologically that is a real issue.

Narcissism, aggressive tendencies, lower school performance, anxiety and depression were all cited as side effects in teens who use Facebook on a regular basis.
For the study, Dr. Larry Rosen, a professor of psychology at CSU-Dominguez Hills, observed 300 teens while studying with access to social media and collected findings from 1,000 surveys distributed to urban teenagers.

Rosen shared his findings in his presentation, “Poke Me. How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids” at the 119th annual American Psychological Association convention last weekend in Washington.

Although negatives seemed to outweigh the positives, Rosen also noted some good outcomes of social media use, including heightened actual empathy from those exhibiting “virtual empathy” online.

He also mentioned that socially inhibited teens were able to become less introverted as they used Facebook to learn to “socialize behind the safety of various screens.”

Still, despite his findings, Rosen claims there is a simple way to understand both what kids are doing online and how it is affecting them—one that tends to be a cure-all for many parenting dilemmas, and is likely hugely frustrating to the masses of parents whose daily questions to their hormonal teens are greeted with monosyllabic retorts—communication.Science Daily quoted Rosen as saying, “If you feel that you have to use some sort of computer program to surreptitiously monitor your child’s social networking, you are wasting your time. Your child will find a workaround in a matter of minutes. You have to start talking about appropriate technology use early and often and build trust, so that when there is a problem, whether it is being bullied or seeing a disturbing image, your child will talk to you about it.”—hopefully before the narcissism, aggression or depression set in.